


Madame Director

by CannibalHello



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-08 19:22:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11653080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CannibalHello/pseuds/CannibalHello
Summary: "Lucretia had sent her friends away, she had made peace with it – it was a gutting blow to realize that she had made new friends, and the relics were still hurting them. Killing them."Spoilers for episode 66.





	Madame Director

They gathered around Fisher’s tank, Lucretia and her hand-selected crew. ( _Not a crew_ , she thought, painfully aware of her Captain standing at her side, horribly silent. _A staff, maybe._ ) She could feel their eyes on her as she looked down at the file in her hands. Rosing wasn’t the first of Lucretia’s recruits to go rogue, not the first file she’d fed into the voidfish tank, but for some reason her betrayal weighed heavily on everyone. Maybe because Rosing had been one of the first people Lucretia brought into the Bureau. She had helped induct and train most of the people on the moon, she had helped them deal with their returned memories, she had reassured those who came too close to the relics’ thrall.  


She had been a friend, Lucretia realized. Lucretia had sent her friends away, she had made peace with it – it was a gutting blow to realize that she had made new friends, and the relics were still hurting them. Killing them.  


Heart in her throat, Lucretia forced herself forward, fed the file into voidfish tank, watched with glassy eyes as Fisher erased Rosing’s memory for all but those few around her. Stars glittered in his bell, though he didn’t seem particularly enthused about his meal.  


The room filled with a tense silence, an expectation. _I should say something_ , Lucretia thought. _I’m the Director._ All she could think of was the carved ducks that once littered Fisher’s tank, the piles of books in Rosing’s empty room.  


“Well, I guess I’ve got seniority now,” Boyland’s gruff voice cut the silence, graciously drawing the room’s eyes off of Lucretia. “Figure I ought to start.”  


“I first met Rosing at a library, believe it or not. Don’t have much time for readin’, a family like mine, but the kids were spreadin’ some bug like wildfire, and you know once a dozen are sick the next hundred will be right behind. So I was lookin’ for a remedy…”  


Boyland tells them how Rosing helped him hunt down a rare fungus for a cure, and how they ended up deep in the Underdark fighting Duergar, and how Rosing turned to Boyland when they’d clawed their way up to the surface and said, “How do you feel about saving the world?”  


Just like that, the floodgates are opened. One by one, people step forward to share their stories about Rosing. How she trained up the Seekers, how she helped them establish cover stories, how she always had one hand on her stone of farspeech in case someone needed her.  


The last story comes from a new recruit, an orc woman Boyland had brought in. Lucretia wasn’t sure what Killian had done to impress Boyland, but during her trial Lucretia watched her nail an enemy with a crossbow bolt mid-flip. She seemed tough as nails.  


Killian’s voice was rough as she told her Rosing story. “On my first mission, there was a cave-in. While we were running around, trapped and lost, being chased by the people we were supposed to catch, Rosing was scouring the library. I mean, I went in there afterwards, to thank her—the place was a mess. I think she used up every drop of magic she had finding that map, and then she found the energy to guide us through, somehow. Wouldn’t let anybody else do it—said she was responsible for her Seekers, and she would see us through.” As Killian paused, Lucretia noticed the tense line of her bulky shoulders. Finally, they drooped. “How could she turn?” Killian’s voice was soft, but everyone heard her. She wasn’t the only one turning the question over in her minds.  


“Rosing was brilliant, and brave, and the best of all of us,” Lucretia found herself saying, before she had even decided to. With a steadying breath, she put her back to the voidfish and faced her staff. Her people.  


“Rosing was the best of all of us,” she said again. “She wanted to save the world, she wanted peace and freedom from the destruction that always follows the relics. We must remember – _we_ must remember, because the rest of the world will not, what happened to her. Even the best of us is not immune to the call of power. No one is.  


“We must remember all that Rosing did in the name of peace. Her betrayal – her _fall_ is why we are all here, why you all have been chosen and tested and tried again and again. We serve Rosing’s memory by continuing our work, by one day destroying the relics. Because absolute power corrupts absolutely. Because even the best of us may fall to destruction. So we will work, and we will watch ourselves and each other, and we will create a world where this corruption cannot poison anyone, not ever again.”  


Lucretia’s speech isn’t met with applause, but with attentive faces, grim and resolute. Appropriate, she thinks. She nods to them all and glides out of the room – she thinks they will remain, maybe talk more. But they weren’t all hand-trained by her, they haven’t known her as long as the old hats, and some of them might not be able to talk with Madame Director there. Might not be able to mourn. She doesn’t want to intrude.  


She is stopped just outside the door by pursuing footsteps, the gentle clearing of a throat. Boyland doesn’t hurry after her, just moseys on close enough for her to hear.  
“I’ve lost a lot of people,” the dwarf says, a slight shrug. Lucretia thinks of his legion of children and the dozen-or-so spouses she’s met. _I’ve lost whole planes_ , she thinks, trying to stifle the bitterness. “It’s good to remember. To tell the stories. Hurts, but it’s good anyway.”  


It’s hard, in that moment, for Lucretia to look at him without seeing Merle. She nods, a sad smile on her face, and continues the retreat to her office. " _It’s good to remember_ " haunts her, the way Fisher’s empty tank haunts her, the way Davenport’s silence haunts her.  


She remembers the words, later, surrounded by a crowd full of tears and sniffles as they remember Boyland, one by one. No one talks about how he started the tradition – maybe no one remembers. They mention the donuts, and his kids, and his cigars.  


It’s a sickening reversal, this funeral. She watches the Reclaimers, her friends, as they joke and feign grief. She watches Merle and thinks of the compassionate, stubborn preacher that Boyland once reminded her of. She watches Merle and tries to find her friend, and she fails.  


_It’s good to remember_ , Lucretia thinks, tears welling in her eyes. _Hurts, but it’s good anyway._

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write about Lucretia's relationship with the BoB, so I invented a founding member. And named her after MBMBaM bnf Rachel Rosing. And killed her off. Sorry, Rachel. It's not personal, I swear. 
> 
> In my mind, this is set shortly after the moon base is finished, while they're still figuring out how to set checks and balances to keep people from using the relics. There isn't even a Reclaimer team yet, I imagine this being the catalyst for its creation.
> 
> Anyway, I love Lucretia and I forgive her for everything. I just want her to get her friends back.


End file.
